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Conferring- but how? As itself possessing them or not? How
can it convey what it does not possess, and yet if it does
possess how is it simplex? And if, again, it does not, how is it
the source of the manifold?
A single, unmanifold emanation we may very well allow- how even
that can come from a pure unity may be a problem, but we may
always explain it on the analogy of the irradiation from a
luminary- but a multitudinous production raises question.
The explanation is that what comes from the Supreme cannot be
identical with it and assuredly cannot be better than it- what
could be better than The One or the utterly transcendent? The
emanation, then, must be less good, that is to say, less
self-sufficing: now what must that be which is less
self-sufficing than The One? Obviously the Not-One, that is to
say, multiplicity, but a multiplicity striving towards unity;
that is to say, a One-that-is-many.
All that is not One is conserved by virtue of the One, and from
the One derives its characteristic nature: if it had not attained
such unity as is consistent with being made up of multiplicity we
could not affirm its existence: if we are able to affirm the
nature of single things, this is in virtue of the unity, the
identity even, which each of them possesses. But the
all-transcendent, utterly void of multiplicity, has no mere unity
of participation but is unity's self, independent of all else, as
being that from which, by whatever means, all the rest take their
degree of unity in their standing, near or far, towards it.
In virtue of the unity manifested in its variety it exhibits,
side by side, both an all-embracing identity and the existence of
the secondary: all the variety lies in the midst of a sameness,
and identity cannot be separated from diversity since all stands
as one; each item in that content, by the fact of participating
in life, is a One-many: for the item could not make itself
manifest as a One-and-all.
Only the Transcendent can be that; it is the great beginning, and
the beginning must be a really existent One, wholly and truly
One, while its sequent, poured down in some way from the One, is
all, a total which has participation in unity and whose every
member is similarly all and one.
What then is the All?
The total of which the Transcendent is the Source.
But in what way is it that source? In the sense, perhaps, of
sustaining things as bestower of the unity of each single item?
That too; but also as having established them in being.
But how? As having, perhaps, contained them previously?
We have indicated that, thus, the First would be a manifold.
May we think, perhaps, that the First contained the universe as
an indistinct total whose items are elaborated to distinct
existence within the Second by the Reason-Principle there? That
Second is certainly an Activity; the Transcendent would contain
only the potentiality of the universe to come.
But the nature of this contained potentiality would have to be
explained: it cannot be that of Matter, a receptivity, for thus
the Source becomes passive- the very negation of production.
How then does it produce what it does not contain? Certainly not
at haphazard and certainly not by selection. How then?
We have observed that anything that may spring from the One must
be different from it. Differing, it is not One, since then it
would be the Source. If unity has given place to duality, from
that moment there is multiplicity; for here is variety side by
side with identity, and this imports quality and all the rest.
We may take it as proved that the emanation of the Transcendent
must be a Not-One something other than pure unity, but that it is
a multiplicity, and especially that it is such a multiplicity as
is exhibited in the sequent universe, this is a statement worthy
of deliberation: some further enquiry must be made, also, as to
the necessity of any sequel to the First.
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